If anyone wants to continue to try (& repeatedly fail) to make assumptions & presumptions about my character and/or my morals, etc., by all means continue to make yourselves look more & more foolish. You may not intend it, but you're providing a but of comedy. Thanks for that.

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If you want to take on a smug sense of superiority, you need to earn it. You can't just claim it because you can't handle the arguments being thrown at you. Also, you can't through a wide, vague net of implying everyone is idiots, then cry "RED SWEATER!" when someone calls you out on it.

Anyway, you keep avoiding the OJ question. Do you feel his criminal verdict is the final arbiter on his guilt or innocence?

The latest person to be accused of rape following the Weinstein avalanche of allegations, and the James Toback ones (though those have been around since the late 80's when Spy magazine ran an article about him) is a really disheartening one: Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

The author wants to be a good guy and "woke" to every accusation of sexual assault, but utilizes an uncharacteristically (for recent articles o this subject) skeptical tone and arch quotation marks to convey the usual implications about mental instability and unreliability, basically since the accused is someone the author likes.

Agreed. I'm wondering if any other will women come forward especially since his accuser said he offered to pass any students that would give him a blow job and things like this rarely happen just once. Though he'd be far from the only college professor to pass students after receiving sexual favors, but, one would hope, those were consensual sex acts, unlike the drugging and rape she described.

If she's telling the truth, there will be more. Drugging a drink is an unambiguous act of a serial predator.

On one hand, Tyson doesn't seem like the type. On the other, college is a rapey place, and while at college I met plenty of men who didn't seem like the type yet bragged convincingly about sexual assault.

A grad student sleeping consensually with undergrads may be gross and a power imbalance, but it doesn't particularly shock my conscience.

Yes, but in certain cases the criminal justice system has been just about worthless at providing anything close to justice. I'm not sure that discussing something is the same thing as playing judge, jury, and executioner. Pointing your finger at someone isn't going to land them in jail. You do need an actual trial for that. But sometimes the court of public opinion is the only place where any kind of justice gets seen at all, and in some of these cases it's taken literally decades for even that (Cosby, Weinstein, Toback). It does seem like there's an avalanche of smaller things that are kind of unrelated coming out as a result of a few of these bigger ones. Like the fact that Val Kilmer punched some girl in the face during a movie audition (which she sued over and took a settlement, but now she wants the public to know). And as for the finger pointing, Cosby was getting ready to make a huge comeback when Hannibal Burress reminded everyone that he had allegedly raped like 30 women and suddenly that got derailed and even airings of Cosby show reruns started getting cancelled. Likewise, with the Weinstein thing. This guy got away with doing this for decades until they couldn't stop one, ONE, article from coming out and suddenly the flood gates were opened. Yes, this can lead to a witchhunt type atmosphere, but it can also bring some real villains to light.

While I certainly agree that the deck has been stacked against accusers, I can't (with a clear conscience) condemn, curse, belittle, etc., the accused... in advance of being found guilty in a court of law.

And don't get me started with this ridiculous "court of public opinion," which, for the most part, usually turns out to be just a bunch of mindless drones being led by the nose.

Sure, you may find the occasional "cooler head" amongst them, but their "voices" are usually drowned out by the pure idiocy that spews out of the keyboards of the many that can't seem to form their own opinions, but just parrot what has been spoon fed to them.

Anyway, while we cannot change the past, I hope that with all of these individuals coming forward, it will help to change things for the better.

Rodriguez is running around the internet collecting high-fives for his heroism, but I think his account is a gender political nightmare.

He may literally be the first person to congratulate themselves for their conduct in these sordid episodes

Rose McGowan barely has a voice in Rodriguez's account, aside from expressing shock, gratitude and awe.

He brags about impulsively inviting Weinstein to their table, but doesn't mention if Rose consented to face down her rapist

Rodriguez's own high-pressure on-the-spot offer of a film role, and his delusionally messianic characterization of her response, reeks of quid pro quo in light of their subsequent relationship.

Rodriguez doesn't mention he and McGowan went on to have a presumably consensual relationship while filming Grindhouse, which itself was inappropriate if normalized unprofessional behavior, and the fact of it, and the omission, compromises what integrity his account may have.

Is Rodriguez opening McGowan to legal harassment by publicly stating she broke her NDA in 2005? Probably not, but it doesn't sound as if the possibility occurred to Rodriguez.

McGowan wasn't quoted in the story, and has not commented or tweeted about it, which is of course her right, but she's been pretty enthusiastic about retweeting her supporters before now.

There's an element of creepy territory-marking in Rodriguez's creepy, self-congratulatory savior complex. It sounds like he used McGowan's experience as a club to assert alpha primate dominance with Weinstein, reminiscent of the Jack Woltz-Johnny Fontaine feud in THE GODFATHER.

I wonder if Rodriguez is trying to get ahead of impending allegations of his own misconduct by reminding McGowan of how much he thinks she owes him?

For what it's worth, entertainment journalists on Twitter are anecdotally confirming a lack of interest in promoting GRINDHOUSE by the Weinstein Company.

I wonder if Rodriguez is trying to get ahead of impending allegations of his own misconduct by reminding McGowan of how much he thinks she owes him?

Pure speculation, right? There's nothing I've read or seen that even points to Rodriquez having been or going to be accused. Sorry, but this kind of spurious allegation, however couched in "maybes" and "perhaps", reads all kinds of wrong to me. This is honestly where the hunt turns from reality to witch.

It's not a witch hunt to examine the way Rodriguez's own account—and his self-serving omissions—ironically speaks to matter-of-fact abuse which matches Weinstein's MO, and distinguished only by the presumption of consent, something we're supposed to take Rodriguez's exaggerated word on, while McGowan has either declined comment or not been asked. If Weinstein surprised an actress by confronting her with her rapist and forcing him to cast her in a movie there'd be no question it was abuse and a power trip.

Anyway, Rodriguez is being feted for his courage. Not much of a witch hunt.

Jesus. Come the fuck on. You're reading so much into what he wrote and inject your own bias into it that you've convinced yourself that Rodriguez is guilty despite no accusation against him. You're worse than TMZ dude. You presume guilt before there's even an accuser.

Ride the high horse, but you're doing no favors. Unless you have inside knowledge, heard from someone who was there or otherwise know something no one has yet to divulge, then stop with the bullshit speculation and accusations based on absolutely nothing. This is serious shit and, as such, merits full consideration not some out-of-hand bullshit because you don't like how someone wrote an op-ed.

I think it's admirable that Rodriguez stood up to Weistein no matter what his movies were (and when you leave your pregnant wife for said star you are defending it's hard to say there were no ulterior motives). He was still one of the few people willing to defy Weinstein's black-balling at his own company. I guess the only thing that really bugged me about his piece is the fact he laments about how Weinstein buried his film for having McGowan in it almost as much as he does the sexual assaults.

And, Paul, hard to say he's bandwagon jumping if he was willing to sacrifice his movie and his marriage for McGowan long before there was a bandwagon. He's not jumping on the bandwagon. He was her shining white knight.

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